Friends of the Earth Birmingham Action Briefing Jun 98/Jul 98

Energy

After last year's campaign batterings, Shell and BP are both looking to receive more favourable 'green' PR.

Shell have withdrawn from the Global Climate Coalition, which remains the worst of the Big Industry campain groups for smoke-screening on climate change. This is a major victory for Friends of the Earth.

Meanwhile BP 's Solar International division were promoting 'positive energy' during the G8 summit with their Solar Showcase building in Birmingham's Centernary Square.

Equipped with a south facing roof composed of 22 parallel strings of 8 photo voltaic modules, BP claim a 15kW peak output for their design. Linked to the local electricity network, the system can export power during the day and import at night.To prove their point, the building housed an array of low energy domestic lighting, computers, fax, video and televisons. As part of a heat recovery system, an underfloor pebble-bed stores night-time air during the Summer for cooling next day and excess room heat during the Winter to feed back into the room the next day.

BP's solar building was open to the public throughout the Summit up until June 1st. After this date BP Solar plan to move it to a permanent site in South Wales.

David Dugmore

In 1998 BP Solar will manufacture its one millionth solar module. BP claim that this figure represents enough power to meet the electricity needs of over 25,000 European homes -Ed